If higher education has faded as a public issue, perhaps it's because academics are such poor advocates, writes Erica Cervini.

DOES anyone really care about higher education? Do politicians care? Or, for that matter, do academics care enough to get out from behind their lecterns to show the public why universities are important?

Despite more people going to university than ever before, higher education seems to barely rate a mention. At the time of writing, Julia Gillard had sent out 133 media releases since January, seven of which had some link to higher education. Only one dealt with a new announcement: the My University website.

The words ''higher education'' and ''universities'' are unlikely to be uttered in this year's federal election.

So, what is going on?

Perhaps the very people working in universities are to blame for letting higher education fade into the background.

The National Tertiary Education Union, for example, isn't reaching out to the general public to explain why universities are important, despite having a section on its website called Our Universities Matter.

What's the use of quarantining that sentiment to cyberspace: the only people likely to look at it are those who are already union members. Perhaps the union should follow the example of the teacher unions, which have run public campaigns on why schools are important to society. The campaigns had clear messages: teachers want the best for students, and schools must be properly funded.

Our Universities Matter is enough to send anyone to sleep. According to the union website, the ''only way to guarantee that Australian universities will be able continue to fulfil their unique functions is through a legislative framework which clearly defines the roles and responsibilities of universities as well as specifying the appropriate regulation and funding mechanisms''.

The teacher unions also have not held back on criticising federal government school policies such as My School and National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy testing. In contrast, the academics' union appears soft.

It used to make noise when criticising the Howard government's higher education policies, but for some reason it doesn't know how to act when a Labor government is in power. Nevertheless, many issues remain the same: inadequate funding, worsening student-staff ratios and the slashing of subjects.

And where are the union critiques of the government's 2009 paper, Transforming Australia's Higher Education System? The Rudd government wants universities to get bigger and hopes that, by 2025, 40 per cent of those aged 25 to 34 will have a bachelor's degree or better. This will produce about 217,000 additional graduates by 2025, the paper says.

How is this going to be properly funded? Should universities just keep getting bigger and bigger? How is this supposed to improve quality in universities?

Perhaps another explanation for higher education fading into the background comes down to the academics themselves.

Not so long ago, Third Degree spoke to a couple of German academics working at a Victorian university. They remarked that Australian academics like to whinge a lot, but don't do anything to change what they are upset about.

''Oh, they complain about the managers and they complain about the amount of work they do, but they just sit around,'' they told Third Degree.

It's not the first time Third Degree has heard people say that academics whinge a lot or live in their own world. When Third Degree spoke to a union worker at a higher education conference a few years back, she said she was often frustrated with academics because they kept to themselves. ''They need to get out more,'' said the worker, who is a university bureaucrat.

Admittedly, there is a small group of academics who do stick their necks out and fight for better universities. But how much support do they get from colleagues?

Last year, 50 French universities, including the Sorbonne, went on strike for 15 weeks to protest against government changes to universities, including changes to teacher training. Would the same action occur in Australia? Third Degree doubts it.

If academics are concerned about the future of universities, they need to get out and show the public why universities are important.

Competition is heating up among Australian universities to snare medical students but it pays to shop around, writes Erica Cervini.

''All Australian students at Deakin's Medical School are awarded Commonwealth Supported Places (HECS),'' the university declared in a half-page advertisement in The Age recently.

The ad also said the university was ''proud to provide opportunities to the next generation of doctors''.

Was the timing of the ad deliberate? Or just a coincidence?

It appeared the week news broke that Melbourne University's new graduate medical degree would have Commonwealth-supported places (CSPs) and full-fee paying places for local students. Those willing to pay full fees would be up for $204,000 for the four-year degree.

Deakin, which also offers a four-year graduate medical degree, is taking the fight to Melbourne. Perhaps Deakin is making the point that it hasn't given its medical degree ''postgraduate'' status to get around the ban on charging local undergraduate students full fees.

Melbourne students will graduate with a doctor of medicine. Deakin students, like others around the country who do graduate in medicine, come out with a bachelor of medicine and bachelor of surgery (MBBS).

The advertisement also throws up an interesting issue: the increasing competition among universities to snare students. Just imagine the responses the writers of the Deakin ad wanted to generate from prospective students.

Student 1: Why would you take a full-fee place at Melbourne if you can get a Commonwealth-supported place at Deakin?

Student 2: You'd only take the full-fee place if you didn't have high enough marks and had access to heaps of money.''

The ad has another message: shop around for your graduate-entry medical course. So, Third Degree did. After reading university websites and brochures, and contacting admissions officers, we found that Melbourne is the only public university to offer full-fee places to local students.

Monash University, Melbourne's closest competitor, offers undergraduate and graduate entry. The four-year graduate program has 65 Commonwealth-supported places for local students and 10 fee-paying spots for international students. A year of the medical degree for local students costs $8859.

Sydney University, one of Melbourne's main rivals in world university rankings, has the country's second-oldest graduate medical degree. All its domestic places are subsidised by the Commonwealth. The Australian National University, Melbourne's other rival in the rankings, has 90 Commonwealth-supported places in graduate medicine for local students and up to 20 full-fee-paying places for international students.

Griffith University, whose former vice-chancellor is Glyn Davis, states on its medical school website: ''There are no domestic fee-paying places available.'' Queensland University also doesn't charge local students full fees.

However, Melbourne doesn't have the most expensive medical degree -- that honour goes to the private Bond University. The graduate degree costs $273,714. But in 2011, there will only be places for local students, because the university says it is ''committed to easing'' the doctor shortage.

Will some of the other public universities start charging local students for their medical degrees? That's anyone's guess. But one thing is for sure: Melbourne has shown how this can be achieved.

However, there are other professional degrees with doctor status. The Juris Doctor, the graduate law course for students, was first introduced by some of the Group of Eight universities in Victoria. Now it has been adopted by non-Go8 universities. It's a nice money-earner.

A full-fee place for domestic students in the JD at Melbourne University (there are also CSPs) is $89,100. At the University of NSW a full-fee place in the JD program for a local student is $81,360, while a place Commonwealth-supported place will be ''awarded on the basis of academic merit to the most highly qualified applicants''. In 2011, the University of Technology, Sydney, will charge domestic students $63,300.

But once again, it pays to shop around for graduate-entry law to avoid the big JD fees. One way to do this is to apply for graduate entry in a bachelor of law degree at a university such as Flinders. You will get a Commonwealth-supported place. Instead of graduating with a JD, you come out with an LLB. Both degrees achieve the same result: they entitle you to practise law.

Third Degree is waiting to see the ads from these universities.

Postscript
• Steve Keen, an associate professor in economics at the University of Western Sydney, is the economist who first warned the world of the coming Global Financial Crisis, according to his peers. More than 2500 economists voted in the Revere Award for Economics, sponsored by The Real World Economics Review. The award is named in honour of Paul Revere and his famous ride to warn Americans of the approaching British army. Steve Keen is well-known as "rebel" economist.

• RMIT's new chancellor will be Anne Dalton, a lay firm partner. Deputy chancellor will be Rodney Wulff, a managing director. Third Degree's post in August last year identified the trend for universities to appoint business people to council.

For those who care about the survival of humanities courses, the news is bad on every front. By Erica Cervini.

Not all non-fiction best-sellers are cookbooks and celebrity biographies.

Sydney's Gleebooks have history, politics and art history books in their top 10 non-fiction list for May. These include books about Australia's World War II campaign in Greece and the history of Sri Lankan independence.

Melbourne's Readings bookshops also have a spread of politics and history topics on their May top 10 non-fiction list. These include What's Wrong with ANZAC? by Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, and Breaking News: The Golden Age of Graham Perkin by Ben Hills.

Alain de Botton's philosophy books also do very well in Australia.

But it's not all about the books: one of Third Degree's neighbours, a 71-year-old factory worker, loves pay TV's History Channel.

Australians do like their humanities. But there's a different story to be told in universities: some decision-makers just don't like their history, politics and philosophy. There's constant news about funding cuts to the humanities resulting in subject and staff reductions.

Only last week an academic told Third Degree that women's studies at Melbourne University was nearly dead.

Does this mean the humanities have a bleak future? There is some evidence for thinking this.
In March, Australian National University staff and students circulated a petition because they were worried about possible cuts to undergraduate subjects such as English and drama.

In the same month, staff became concerned about the future of European studies at the University of Western Australia.

The recent cuts to history and philosophy at Melbourne University have been well documented. Now the schools of history and philosophy are to be merged: the university is currently advertising for a foundation head for the school of historical and philosophical studies.

The point is these universities are part of the Group of Eight, the places you would expect to support and strengthen the humanities. All top universities in the world have strong arts faculties and offer a range of languages, something that is under threat at Australian universities.
And all top universities know that their reputation depends on the quality of their humanities.

The other reason it's vital that the G-8 have robust humanities is because many other universities do not. In 2007, the Queensland University of Technology decided that the humanities were unviable and axed its school of humanities along with the bachelor of arts. History, geography and politics had become passe: the emphasis would now be on the ''creative industries''.

Universities have also seen fit to throw the humanities in with unrelated areas. Central Queensland University, for example, has the faculty of arts, business, informatics and education. Third Degree's favourite is James Cook University's faculty of law, business and creative arts.

How can the humanities have any kind of identity when they are part of strange faculty concoctions? How can students see that universities are serious about the humanities?

Perhaps some of these questions will be answered when the final report of a ground-breaking project, Humanities in Australia Today, is released in about a month. The project, undertaken by the Australian Academy of Humanities, began in April last year and seeks to paint a picture of the state of humanities today. The research has looked at student enrolments, disciplinary strengths, and trends and challenges.

Kylie Brass, one of the project's researchers, told Third Degree the project's findings would also give universities and academics a ''sense of the wealth of the work going on''.

Whatever the project's findings, it will be up to academics to keep fighting for the humanities. Unless they do, there won't be the breadth of subjects for students to study. If students don't have the chance to study the humanities, who will write the non-fiction bestsellers of the future?

*The Times Higher Education reports that Middlesex University, a former polytechnic, has announced that it will close its philosophy program. A Facebook group, Save Middlesex Philosophy, has attracted 11,684 members (when Third Degree last checked).

Awareness of mental health issues has grown markedly, but many university students remain wary of how they will be treated if they disclose their problems, writes Erica Cervini.

WHEN Patrick McGorry, a youth mental health expert, became the 2010 Australian of the Year, he told the 7.30 Report that his award was a ''coming-of-age of the mental health field''.

''I feel a bit symbolic of that, because we've seen great growths in awareness in recent years amongst the general public about the need for better mental health care, even about recognising mental ill health when it's all around us,'' Professor McGorry said.

Almost every week there are radio discussions about mental illness.

So you'd assume the stigma attached to having a mental illness was not so strong now. You'd also think that universities, which have counselling services and research centres for mental health, would be places in which students feel comfortable talking about their mental health.

But a new study by RMIT academic Jennifer Martin shows that students are still wary about telling someone at university about their mental health problems.

''The majority of the students in the study had not disclosed their mental health condition to university staff due to fears of discrimination and disadvantage arising from the stigma of mental illness,'' Dr Martin writes in her paper, Stigma and Student Mental Health in Higher Education.

Dr Martin's study of 54 students found that many believed that telling a staff member about their mental illness would be seen as ''telling lies'' or ''wanting privileges''. Some thought they would be judged differently to other students and might even lose their university place.

Others reported that they had a bad experience in telling a staff member about their illness.
''One staff member ... addressed me about my special needs in front of the whole class, with everyone's attention, when we had a test saying: 'If you don't feel well at any time, you can just leave if you need to.' I never attended that class again, failing it, and have never disclosed to any staff since.''

In her paper, published in the journal Higher Education Research & Development, Dr Martin suggests one solution to tackling students' mental health problems is for staff to be educated about them.

''All academic and administrative staff should receive training on how to recognise signs and symptoms of mental illness and respond in appropriate ways,'' she writes.

''This includes educating staff in their legal responsibilities of duty of care and ways to support students achieve their educational goals and reduce the harmful impacts of the stigma of mental illness.''

How realistic is this suggestion?

Academics and administrative staff should be able to advise students on how to access university counselling services. And it's clear from the report that some staff need guidance on how to be tactful and professional.

But Dr Martin's suggestion brings into question the role of the academic.

Is it part of the academic's job to recognise students' mental illnesses? Would staff have the time to do the mental health training? Would they feel confident about identifying students with mental health problems?

Even more relevant is the support universities give lecturers, particularly at a time of rising workloads and rising student-staff ratios.

It's usually up to academics to accommodate the needs of students with mental health problems and disabilities. For example, it is up to lecturers to find alternative exam rooms for these students or write different exams and assessments for them.

While universities are happy to take students with disabilities, they do not give academics the time and resources to meet students' needs. For example, they are not given fewer tutorials or release from administrative duties.

If some academics seem unsympathetic to the plight of these students, perhaps it's because the onus is on the lecturer, not the university, to provide students with the additional support.
Even if there are services to support students, their numbers are small. A student in Dr Martin's study went to a university service and was told that it was too busy.

''They told me that they were available if I had a crisis or needed an extension on essays. So it basically felt like I have to wait for when things get really bad before I am able to use their services.''

* One in 10 Australians between 18 and 25 will experience an anxiety disorder in any given 12-month period.

* Depression is the most common mental health problem for those aged 12 to 25.
Psychosis is most likely to occur in late adolescence or in early adulthood.

* The US newsletter Inside Higher Ed reports on a new survey of university counselling services in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. In all, 363 responded. Demand for counselling services has stabilised, but most services reported a growth in the number of students with severe psychological problems.